The Grand Junction Regional Airport will change course on the building already under construction while also working to slow down the current pace of the project.

The board voted unanimously to turn back the federal grant already issued for the project and resubmit it with changes.

Grand Junction Mayor Sam Susuras voted with the other four board members who were present, despite arguing strenuously that the airport should proceed with the grant as it was awarded.

To do otherwise, Susuras said, would be to invite financial disaster.

“It could put the airport authority into bankruptcy and receivership if we pursue this action,” Susuras said during a special meeting of the airport authority board in Grand Junction City Hall.

The changes approved by the board include changing the description of the terminal building under construction to that of an administration and aircraft rescue and firefighting building.

The Federal Aviation Administration agreed to fund up to 65 percent of the $6.2 million building when it was called a terminal building. Changing the name of the building will reduce the amount of money the federal agency will contribute to the project.

The issue arose in November when the FBI raided the airport offices conducting a fraud investigation. The airport’s director of aviation, Rex Tippetts, was subsequently suspended and then, after a preliminary report on an internal investigation, was fired.

That caused airport officials to review many of Tippetts’ actions and conclude that the building was mischaracterized to federal officials.

About the same time the raid was conducted, the FAA changed the airport’s risk assessment for grant purposes from “nominal” to “moderate.”

Amy Jordan, the interim director of aviation, met with FAA officials earlier this month to discuss the way a space within the building was designated.

Federal officials welcomed action by the airport board to make the changes, including eliminating a reference to future baggage screening areas in the basement that officials said couldn’t feasibly be used for that purpose and an office for the nonexistent position of a duty officer in the fire department, Jordan said.

No federal money has been used so far on the construction project.

Worries about the extent to which the submissions to the FAA might constitute a fraudulent application are so far unfounded, Susuras said.

“It’s all hearsay,” Susuras said. “I see nothing fraudulent in them at all.”

What if the board made no changes? Susuras asked.

“You might find yourself in jail,” board member Tom Frishe said.

“I do see a substantial problem,” board member Rick Wagner said, who said the problems with the way the building was described were obvious. “That’s sort of like taking a fire truck and calling it a sports car,” Wagner said.

The airport’s future is in jeopardy, Susuras said, calling the previous board “visionaries” who were trying to expand the airport.” If this board doesn’t adopt that vision, this airport will fail,” Susuras said.

In the end, however, Susuras said he recognized he was making no headway with the other board members and cast his vote to change the building description, seek a new grant in the spring and try to work out an arrangement with the Shaw Construction, which is building the project, that could slow it down until different financial arrangements can be completed.

Susuras said he agreed to go along, so the project could move forward, but insisted the airport is spending unnecessarily on a Denver attorney and an internal investigation dealing with the raid.

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By Ralph D. D'andrea - Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Visionaries? Really Sam?

By John Wilkenson - Wednesday, January 15, 2014

You’ve got to love stories like this. It’s hard to miss the irony when one of the alphabet-soup federal agencies which has been lying to us for 50 years about who killed JFK gets to pretend like they’re the good guys and swoop down on some of our “thought-they-were-politically-connected” local “Good Old Boy” club members and seize some of their goodies without the slightest shred of constitutional due process or “innocent-until-proven-guilty” cultural awareness.
That’s what you get in a culture where criminal government is allowed to spy on everybody and operate in secret. That’s what you get in a culture where judges are allowed to anoint themselves with absolute immunity from the consequences of their crimes while sealing court records at whim. That’s what you get in a culture where cops are allowed to beat and kill citizens at will, knowing that brainwashed juries are likely to let them off the hook so long as it looks like at least some of the “bad guys are getting what’s coming to them” in the process. That’s what you get in a culture where women are allowed to kill their third-trimester babies under a pretense of making a private “health decision” instead of facing the politically difficult question of at what point in its development should a pre-birth child be accorded all the same legal protections as post-birth persons.
That’s what you get in a culture where the “Left” is too stupid to understand that it is unsustainable to pay people for not working. That’s what you get in a culture where the “Right” is too stupid to understand that the so-called “war on drugs” has — as was predictable and inevitable — killed the U.S. Constitution and allowed cops to kick down doors and kill innocent people and pets in wrong-address no-knock raids conducted “for the children”.
That’s what you get in a culture that has been so dumbed down by government schools that people can’t understand that wealth is REAL THINGS useful to humans, not the manipulative and illusory monetary numbers attached to those things.
Genuine stupidity (aka willful ignorance) lies in not being able to see that living in a full-blown police state run by corrupt government in secret can in no moral or logical way be construed as being “for the children”. Precisely the opposite is true. The children are being saddled with the consequences (and inconceivably immense and fraudulent debt) of the sins and stupidity of their parents.
That’s what you get in a culture with an ideology of victimhood where you can stifle all rational courteous debate on any issue by pretending that your polemical opponent is a “racist”, “misogynist”, “homophobe” or “hater” if s/he doesn’t agree with you on every last detail.
Galations 6:7 says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Looks to me like reaping time is pretty much here, boys and girls. So have fun!